Retinoids are known to treat different skin conditions such as acne or photo-aging. However retinoids used for topical application, such as retinoic acid, retinaldehyde or retinol can, in certain instances result in redness, itching, stinging, skin scaling or other manifestations of irritation. The inventors have considered that a possible solution to decrease irritation is to use lower concentrations of retinoids in the topical composition. However compositions with reduced levels of retinoids can, understandably, have reduced efficacy.
The inventors have now surprisingly discovered that a particular class of anti-inflammatory compounds, agents that inhibit the cell transcription factor, nuclear kappa-B (NFκB) can be combined with retinoids in a manner to provide a surprisingly large and unexpected synergistic boost in retinol activity, as measured by the expression of the CRAPBII gene.